


The Closest Thing He's Got

by grilledcheesing



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst because of course, Peter is an accidental child of divorce, Peter's dads are Not Having It with each other, Super Dads, hurt Peter because also of course, too many daddy issues to count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-03 03:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grilledcheesing/pseuds/grilledcheesing
Summary: After Spider-Man's final showdown with the Vulture leaves him the worse for wear, he's found by none other than Steve Rogers.Or, five times Tony Stark deeply resented Steve Rogers' new involvement in Peter Parker's life, and one time he did not.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys so much for your prompts/suggestions. I ended up smushing a whole bunch of them into this fic, so bless all bajillion of you for this. Sorry that it's another five times fic; gotta keep myself in check, because I LEGIT HAVE REAL HUMAN WRITING DUE and if I don't do it, well, bad things happen to me and my ability to pay rent. (Hahahhahahaha except not kidding.)

Tony should take the call, but he doesn’t.

 

It isn’t the first time Steve has reached out to him since Siberia. Tony, for the most part, has ignored him; any conversations they couldn’t avoid he has conducted through staff members. What was the point in being a billionaire if you couldn’t occasionally throw that money at people to handle your star spangled problems for you?

 

Then Steve calls again. This is unprecedented. Tony lets it ring twice, and then, against better judgment, he picks up without saying hello.

 

“Tony?”

 

“Speaking,” he says curtly.  

 

“I think I … found something of yours.”

 

“Define _something_ , Rogers. I’m in a meeting.”

 

“I found Spider-Man. Or at least … a kid dressed up as Spider-Man. I’m not entirely sure.”

 

Tony abruptly stands up from the conference table, exiting the room and leaving a dozen stunned state officials in his wake.

 

“What do you mean, you _found Spider-Man?_ ”

 

“Actually, more like I caught him. Falling off the Cyclone on Coney Island.”

 

Tony grits his teeth. It can’t be the kid. He took away his suit specifically to _avoid_ things like Peter falling off the Cyclone on Coney Island, which is a string of words paired together that can’t quite make sense in Tony’s brain.

 

“I mean — I’m not sure if it’s him. He’s just … he looks like he’s in middle school.”

 

Fuck. That can only be one Peter Parker. Tony is already pacing down the hallway, blowing past Congressional security, summoning his car.

 

“I wouldn’t even think to call you, but — well. The beach is on fire and there’s a downed Stark jet in pieces all over it.”

 

It all snaps into place with alarming speed — moving day. The arms dealer Peter was going on about. The jet, filled to the gills with weapons so lethal that god only knows what kind of havoc they could wreak if put into the wrong hands.

 

 _If you’d just listened to me_ , Peter had protested. Tony bites back his remorse, trying to focus on the task at hand. He’d listened, sure, but not nearly well enough if it came to this.

 

“Is he conscious?”

 

“No, but — ”

 

“I’m in D.C. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

 

“I’m going to take him to my place.”

 

“No,” says Tony through his teeth, as he engages his Iron Man suit and braces himself for take-off, “you will stay right where you are.”

 

“I’m not going to stand here and let this kid bleed on a bench.”

 

Tony can hear the judgment in Steve’s voice. It doesn’t do anything to worsen Tony’s guilt, because god knows he already has enough of it. It does pluck the familiar Steve Rogers-shaped nerve, though, which thrums in him like a second angry, beating heart as he soars over Washington, D.C., rushing northward.

 

He almost says something biting back, but he can’t afford to. “How bad of shape is he in, exactly?” he asks.

 

Steve seems to appreciate the magnitude of his concern at once, even if Tony would rather not voice it. “I think he’s gonna be fine,” he says immediately. “But whatever just happened, it did a number on him.”

 

Tony closes his eyes for the briefest of moments mid-flight. He hates that, underneath the mountain of all of his anger, he knows that he can still trust Steve with something as important to him as this.

 

“Give me an address.”

 

Steve obliges, and Tony engages the thrusters on his suit to their fullest capacity. He tries not to, but the flight gives him plenty of time to think — to think about the danger Peter must have put himself in, to think about how much safer he would have been with the full capacity of the suit that Tony took away, to think about how close the kid probably came to mortal peril if there’s a _downed jet on Coney Island_.

 

He hadn’t meant to be out of touch for so long; taking away the suit had never been a permanent punishment, but a lesson. But Tony’s schedule got away from him. He’d left the kid hanging for much longer than he had ever intended. He had no way of anticipating the consequences of that in their fullest form until now.

 

Because of course the kid was always going to keep up the heroics, with or without Tony’s help. He’d done it before and he would do it again. He doubts if there’s anything that would stop a kid like Peter Parker, orders from prominent billionaire tech geniuses be damned.

 

It feels absurd to knock at the door of the nondescript apartment that Steve’s address leads him to, but he can’t exactly bust in, either.

 

Steve opens the door, and Tony is a little taken aback by his appearance. The other man was only cleared a few weeks ago, but he looks almost … unkempt. The beard and the weary eyes might look ordinary on any other New Yorker, but on America’s Golden Boy they look like a borderline cry for help.

 

“Where’s the kid?” Tony asks, blowing past Steve.

 

He doesn’t miss Steve’s slightly indignant exhale. “On the couch,” he says, pointing. “I patched him up best I could. He’s been in and out.”

 

Right now Peter is decidedly out, looking every inch the kid that he is with his skinny frame splayed out on Steve’s couch cushions and bandaging on his forehead and midsection where there are significant rips in the ridiculous 100 percent cotton getup that Tony first found him in when the kid popped up on his radar online.

 

“How … how old is he, exactly?” asks Steve.

 

Tony can tell he’s trying not to pick a fight about it, but he ignores him anyway, leaning down next to Peter. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., run vitals,” he mutters, putting a hand on the kid’s forehead.

 

Steve was right. No permanent damage done. A concussion, a couple of cracked ribs, previous signs of internal bleeding that already corrected itself thanks to the kid’s healing factor. For the first time since he heard Steve say the word _Spider-Man_ on the other end of the line, he breathes easily.

 

He reengages his suit, scooping the kid up like the rag doll he is. Peter flinches and mutters something incomprehensible into the metal of Tony’s suit, but his eyes stay closed. Even as Tony’s leaving the apartment, he’s ten steps ahead of himself — getting the kid to medical, getting his friend Ned to call his aunt as an alibi, calling Happy to make sure all the highly lethal weaponry from the jet is accounted for before Tony inadvertently ends up with more blood on his hands.

 

He walks past a silent, watchful Steve without incident, but pauses at the door.

 

“Thank you,” he says, begrudgingly.

 

Steve has never been one to lord something over anyone. He nods.

 

“The kid,” he asks, tentatively. “What’s his name?”

 

Tony’s first thought is to ignore him and head out the door. Steve has no business knowing Spider-Man’s identity — but then again, neither did Tony in the first place. And he knows, in that bitter corner of his heart, how much Peter idolizes Cap. If he cuts off Steve’s access to Peter, it’ll be for his own sake, not for the kid’s. Somehow it doesn’t sit right with him.

 

“Peter,” he says. And then, after a moment: “Parker.”

 

Steve nods solemnly. Tony should be glad, maybe, that the kid might have someone else in his corner, but he still can’t quite see past the aftermath of Steve’s betrayal to appreciate it.

 

A few hours after Peter is settled into a guest room in the not-quite-yet-emptied Avengers tower, he blearily wakes up and blinks around at the unfamiliar setting. In true zero-to-sixty teenage fashion, Peter jerks up in an instant, like a battery that recharged all at once.

 

“What — how did —” His eyes widen when he sees Tony sitting there. “Oh, shit.”

 

“You’re fine, kid,” says Tony. “You’re at the tower.”

 

Peter turns a furious shade of red. “Oh man,” he says. “The jet. Did — ”

 

“Everything’s accounted for. Everyone’s safe. Thanks to you,” says Tony, who was, in the meantime, debriefed on the situation with all the details they could manage. He can’t quite decide what to do, so he pats the kid on the shoulder a little awkwardly. “You did good, kid. Now get some rest.”

 

Peter nods rapidly, sinking a bit back into the pillows. Tony wonders for a moment if he’s too worked up to get back to sleep, but his eyelids are already heavy, resisting whatever confusion he has written all over his face.

 

“I … I had this _crazy_ dream that Captain America was on the boardwalk,” says Peter. “And then I was, like, in his apartment.”

 

“Oh, that wasn’t a crazy dream, kid. That happened.”

 

Peter’s eyes widen. Then he says, in the most grim, resigned tone that Tony has ever heard him use in the few months of knowing him, “Please, Mr. Stark. You have to kill me.”

 

Tony can’t lie to himself — it stings a bit, how immediately and wholeheartedly Peter is concerned about what Steve thinks of him. He knows he doesn’t have exclusive rights over being the kid’s hero or worrying about his welfare, but given the rest of the circumstances, this feels like an unwitting blow.

 

Tony makes himself swallow it down, clapping Peter on the shoulder again. In the morning, he’ll talk to Peter what happened; in the morning, he’ll figure out what their next steps are; in the morning, he’ll try to tell Peter he’s proud of him in a real way, and not the stilted way his own father always did. But right now, Peter is a kid who needs to sleep.

 

“I would,” he says, as Peter’s eyes start to slide shut again, “but I don’t want to beat your aunt to the punch.”


	2. two

After Peter walks away from Tony’s invitation to join the Avengers, a few weeks pass without incident. And arguably, the thing that ends the streak isn’t really an  _incident_  at all. It’s really just a picture. A picture of a Spider-Man sitting on the edge of a rooftop, his arms gesturing animatedly, next to one Captain fucking America, whose mouth is wide open in a laugh. A picture published in every major news outlet and rag magazine the world over within the course of an hour.

 

Tony initiates the call before he can even formulate any rational thoughts. Peter picks up, slightly breathless, on the third ring.

 

“Hi, Mr. Stark, is everything okay? Where do you need me? Is there a — ”

 

“No, no, kid, stand down. Just calling to …”  _Ask why you’re cavorting with a barely cleared war criminal on a Tuesday afternoon when you could be doing literally anything else_. “Check in on you.”  

 

“Oh,” says Peter. He sounds almost touched, which makes Tony feel all the more awkward about the lie. He makes a mental note to call the kid more often. He forgets, until moments like this, just how much the small gestures mean.

 

“Um, well, I’m in school right now? It’s sixth period?” says Peter.

 

“Right,” says Tony. “Listen, kid … why don’t I have Happy swing by and pick you up after class? We can, uh, tinker with some prototypes in the lab.”

 

“Really?” says Peter. “I mean, yeah, yeah, I’d love to.”

 

Two hours later, Pepper is coughing the words “soccer dad” as she passes by Tony in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as Peter wolfs down Ritz crackers and peanut butter like he hasn’t eaten in days instead of the three hours since school lunch.

 

“I promise nobody’s going to steal that sheet of stale crackers from you, kid.”

 

Peter chews with even more ridiculous vigor. “I’m excited to work in the lab,” he says, his mouth barely clear of food.

 

“Promise that’ll still be there too. Hey, by the way, look what popped up in my newsfeed today.”

 

It’s not exactly the subtle transition Tony had planned, but when is it ever, really. He pulls up the image of Captain America and Spider-Man and enhances it on the screen. Peter’s eyes go wide and he coughs on some cracker.

 

“Is that — like — online?” he asks.

 

“It is, like, everywhere,” says Tony drily.

 

Peter swallows, hard. He can tell the kid is suddenly 80 percent more fidgety than usual that he’s excited and trying to dampen it, either to attempt to look cool or an attempt to spare Tony’s feelings, but as usual whenever Peter tries to hide something, it isn’t working very well.

 

“Huh,” says Peter, a little too innocently.

 

“So, you and Cap are best friends now?”

 

Peter has just shoved another cracker into his mouth, and lets out a word so muffled it probably isn’t even a word. Tony crosses his arms over his chest and waits.

 

“Um,” says Peter after a few seconds. “I mean … I don’t know if he thinks of us as  _friends_  — ”

 

“And does May know you’re hanging out with a guy only just recently taken off a Most Wanted list by the United Nations?”

 

Peter blinks at him. “Are you and Cap still fighting?”

 

 _No, kid, I took you to Germany for a freaking masquerade ball._ “We have yet to fully … patch things up.”

 

Peter tilts his head at him, stopping his food shoveling with a cracker poised between the counter and his mouth. “I thought the whole Accords thing was worked out,” he says warily.

 

“It was,” says Tony, backtracking, because he sees what he’s in danger of doing here. The kid trusts him. If he taints Steve in the kid’s brain, he’s going to have to wrestle with it for a long damn time — and if they have any hope of getting the Avengers back together, he has to at least pave the way for them to  _try_  to be a team.

 

“So … why are you … why does it seem like you guys are … I mean, even before this everyone was always saying you hated each other.”

 

Tony sighs. Okay, then. They’re taking the long way around.

 

“We don’t  _hate_  each other,” he says, even though the words are a little bitter on his tongue. He doesn’t want to oversimplify things, but he doesn’t want shut Peter out of the loop completely. He figures some context is warranted, even if it’s petty.

 

“Listen, kid,” he says, “imagine if you had a sibling.”

 

“Mr. Stark, I don’t have parents,” says Peter in that candid way of his.

 

Tony cringes. “Shit, you really went in for the kill there. I said  _imagine_.”

 

“That’d be … pretty awesome,” says Peter earnestly. “Younger or older?”

 

“No, no, kid, you’re already missing the point.”

 

“I am?”

 

“Imagine you had a sibling that you always had to compete with. Like, no matter what you did, you weren’t  _as good_  as they were. You could never live up to — ”

 

“I always wanted a little brother,” Peter interrupts.

 

“ _Kid_.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“Now imagine this sibling doesn’t even exist. Dead. Gone for years. Shouldn’t even really even  _be_  considered a sibling, because he was never your peer, but your dad goes on and on about him so much that by the time you grow up and get to the be age he was when he turned into a popsicle — ”

 

“Wait, are we talking about Captain America?”

 

“No, we’re talking about Garfield the cat.  _Yes,_  we’re talking about Cap.”

 

Peter’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “You’re mad because you think your dad liked Captain America more than you?”

 

“... you’re making it sound ridiculous. But no, no, it wasn’t — that just laid some of the groundwork for what is a whole messy, deeply personal, super political, much bigger than you and me issues with Rogers that I’d really rather not get into right now.”

 

“Okay,” says Peter skeptically. He looks like he might ask for some elaboration, and thinks the better of it. “But … you’re like … okay if we hang out?”

 

“You’re  _hanging out_  with Steve Rogers?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Like, regularly?”

 

“... Yeah?”

 

“Yeesh, kid. I’m starting to think you’re a social climber,” says Tony, turning his back on him and wiping off some invisible mark in the sink. “How long has this been going on?”

 

“He got in touch with me a few days after Coney Island,” says Peter, sheepishly. He hesitates for a moment, and then mumbles, “Sometimes we get food after school.”

 

He turns around, and immediately hates how much he sounds like the very  _soccer dad_  Pepper teased him of being. It’s a goddamn ‘80s sitcom Very Special Episode in here. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, trying to sound casual and failing completely.  

 

Peter’s eyebrows lift with mild panic. “Was I supposed to?” he asks. “To be honest, I — I thought you knew.”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Sorry,” says Peter.

 

Tony takes a breath. “No, no, don’t be sorry. Just — you know if you ever need anything, you can call  _me_ , right?”

 

Peter looks at him a little doubtfully. Tony taking the suit from him and Happy ignoring his calls the night of Homecoming is still a little fresh on both of their minds.

 

“Listen, I get that I’m — busy. Not all of us can live on the American tax payer’s dollar by filming PSAs about our changing bodies. But I’m here if you need me.”

 

“I don’t … I don’t  _need_  anything,” says Peter, and Tony hates how cautious he’s being, how he seems to actually be putting some thought into what he’s saying instead of prattling away like he usually does. “Sometimes it’s just nice to — have someone to talk to?”

 

The words hit Tony in a place he isn’t expecting. He stares down at his shoes for the briefest of moments, like he might need a split second to compose himself, which is something he hasn’t worried about for awhile.

 

The thing is, he feels like he does talk to Peter. He reads the strings of over eager, emoji-ridden texts. He listens to the rambling voicemails Peter leaves Happy while he’s shoving food in his mouth on the way home from his patrols. He’s there. He just isn’t …  _there_.

 

Peter seems to sense that he’s accidentally stricken a nerve, because there’s even more food in his mouth than usual and he’s watching Tony apprehensively.

 

“Well,” says Tony, not even sure where the sentence is going, “just so you — ”

 

They’re interrupted, then, by the sound of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” blasting through Tony’s kitchen. Peter’s phone buzzes an inch or so to the left on the counter where he left it.

 

“You wanna get that?”

 

Peter shakes his head rapidly. “No, nope, I’m — what were you saying?”

 

“Go ahead and pick up. It could be your aunt.”

 

“It’s not,” says Peter, scrambling for it.

 

Tony reaches out and flips the phone over before Peter can yank it back. The contact on his phone is just three American flag emojis. Ah.

 

“I take it you’re not getting an incoming call from Betsy Ross.”

 

Peter’s face is burning.

 

“I can put it on silent,” he says, reaching out for Tony to give him the phone back.

 

“Too late for that,” Tony quips, accepting the call and putting the phone up to his mouth. “Peter Parker’s phone.”

 

There’s a beat, and a weary breath. “Tony.”

 

“Captain Steve Rogers,” says Tony loudly. “What are you up to these days, aside from bumming around Brooklyn and slandering me to my young protege?”

 

Peter’s eyes turn into small moons.

 

“Trust me, Tony, we don’t talk about you.”

 

“Relax, I’m kidding,” says Tony, mostly for Peter’s benefit, before the kid chokes. “Should I relay him any messages?”

 

“You could just give him the phone.”

 

“Mm, I would, but Peter’s busy right now.”

 

In actuality, Peter’s elbows are propped on the counter and his head is in his hands like he might actually die of embarrassment.

 

“Fine,” says Steve. “Just — ”

 

The phone suddenly plucks itself out of Tony’s hands out of nowhere, and he turns to see Pepper with a raised, impatient eyebrow and the phone pinched between her fingers. “That’s enough of that,” she says, handing Peter the phone. Once Peter puts his face up to it, she gives Tony a real warning look without any playfulness, mouthing the words, “Let him have this.”

 

Tony blows out a breath of surrender.

 

“Hi, yeah, I’ll, uh, call you back, I’m working with Mr. Stark in the lab this afternoon. Yeah, yeah, you too. See ya then.”

 

Peter hangs up and looks over at Tony in this half-apologetic, half-defiant way that reminds Tony a little too much of being 15. Tony cocks his head toward the door.

 

“Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s go check out the lab.”

 

Peter yanks his backpack up from the floor and follows him out, the awkwardness over as soon as it comes. Tony already sensed long before he got to know the kid that Peter is no grudge holder. At first he thought it was just a matter of age, but Tony remembers more than a few slammed doors and choice words long before he was in high school. Peter doesn’t seem to have that same kind of itch.

 

He knows the kid is smart, too, but he doesn’t even fully appreciate just how smart until Peter is elbow deep in a prototype for an invisible shield and asking so many questions that they all seem to topple over themselves like verbal dominoes. Peter even has a few ideas of his own that are so surprisingly un-terrible that Tony might actually consider giving him run of the lab to work on them — under heavy supervision and with extreme distance from anything actually worth any money, of course. Tony gives him a busted old version of his suit to tinker with while Tony gets some actual work done, and the two of them fall into a companionable back-and-forth — Peter telling him about the decathlon team, Tony telling him about his own high school hijinks, the two of them arguing about where to get the best bagels in the city.

 

“You ditched,” says Peter, pointing a screwdriver at him. “You don’t get a vote. Astoria Bagel Shop wins.”

 

He knows the kid means it as a joke, but it brings something home that he’s been wrestling with on and off all day — that Rogers is in the city, and Tony is not.

 

 _Let him have this_.

 

Ugh, his conscience is a bitch.

 

“Hey, kid’s gonna miss curfew if I don’t get him home,” says Happy, interrupting them unexpectedly.

 

Tony and Peter blink over at Happy, and only then does Tony look out the window and realize that outside has gone dark around them.

 

“Oh, shit,” says Peter, pulling his arm out of a jumble of wires.

 

Tony claps him on the back. “Stay in school, yada yada, the usual.”

 

Peter pulls the straps onto his backpack on his way out of the lab and looks back at Tony, his eyes bright. “Thanks, Mr. Stark. This was  _awesome_.”

 

He knows what he should say now. What he  _wants_  to say now.  _Same time again next week?_

 

But Peter isn’t expecting it, and Tony isn’t sure if he’s ready for it. The words are gone before Tony can fully open his mouth, and Peter is waving goodbye and chasing Happy down the hallway and Tony is still standing there, enduring that familiar mix of relief and regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #bless all of you for your kind reviews. Hearing from you humans is the best part of my day. 
> 
> Promise there will be more drama, tout de suite. Just had to lay the sarcastic groundwork, as usual.


	3. three

Tony wakes up at 3:30 in the morning to a call from Happy cutting through the quiet of his bedroom.

 

“Listen,” he says, “the world better be under imminent attack, or — ”

 

“I’ve got May Parker on the line.”

 

 _Or that_. “Put her through.”

 

“Hello?”

 

If Tony wasn’t fully awake before, then the sound of May’s voice is like a shot of cold water in his veins. He sits up so fast that Pepper stirs awake next to him, blinking into the dim light of the room as it brightens in response to him moving.

 

“Everything alright, May?”

 

“Um — no, actually. Peter didn’t come home, and he left a message, but every time I call it just goes straight to voicemail — ”

 

“When was he last in contact?” Tony asks, keeping his voice measured for her sake. He has the display from Peter’s suit projected in front of him in an instant, but there’s nothing to project. The suit isn’t online.

 

That’s impossible. The suit is never _not_ online.

 

“About an hour ago?”

 

“And he said ... ” prompts Tony, as he starts to track the location of Peter’s phone.

 

May’s breath hitches for just a moment, before he can hear her get control over herself. “I’ll just — I’ll play it for you.”

 

Tony braces himself, putting May on speaker so he can focus on tracking him down while he listens.

 

“Hey Aunt May, promise I’m on my way home. Did you need me to pick anything up from the bodega? I — ”

 

A shot rings out. There’s a beat.

 

“Oh, uh, just a car backfiring, ha,” says Peter, in what is obviously a lie. “Anyway, um, see you soon — ”

 

Two more shots, an almost inaudible gasp, and a noise that is unmistakably the sound of a phone being dropped from a long height.

 

“That’s it,” says May, the tinge of panic in her voice even more glaring than it was before. “I didn’t get the voicemail until just now, but the time stamp is from an hour ago, there must be something wrong with his phone, right? That’s what it is?”

 

“Go suit up, I’ll send a car,” Pepper murmurs, sliding out of bed.

 

“I’m sure that’s all it is,” says Tony. “He broke his phone and he’s getting back. I’ll head over to the last place his phone was just in case.”

 

“Thank you,” May breathes.

 

Tony takes a breath, trying to shake the tension out of his chest. “You call me when he gets back, okay?” he says. “Then we’ll both kick his ass for scaring you.”

 

May makes a disbelieving sound of acknowledgment, and Tony hangs up, turning his attention to Pepper.

 

“The suit’s offline. That’s impossible. If his suit is offline, then someone really fucking smart and really fucking dangerous has their hands on him,” says Tony.

 

“Pete’s a tough cookie,” Pepper reminds him, seamlessly taking on the role as the Calm One as soon as Tony unceremoniously drops it at her feet. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Head toward East Harlem, I’ll get you the coordinates. The car’s en route.”

 

He leans down and presses a quick kiss to Pepper’s temple. “Thank you.”

 

She squeezes his arm. “Go.”

 

Tony is used to flying into situations blind, but with the kid, he’d never anticipated that he’d have to. That was the whole _point_ of outfitting the kid with the suit. All the tricks and tech were a flashy disguise for what was essentially intended to be a babysitting exoskeleton, so that if the kid got in any kind of real trouble, somebody would _know_.

 

He’s not on 125th street where Pepper traced the last call, and neither is his phone. That’s good, Tony tells himself. Wherever the kid is, he took the phone with him, and a person with enough wherewithal to grab their broken phone is a person who is very much not dead.

 

Unless, of course, someone stole it, in which case — 

 

A glint of something catches Tony’s eye. Blood, on the pavement.

 

He calls Pepper.

 

“Does the car you sent — ”

 

“Outfitted with medical supplies, yes,” she answers, before Tony can finish.

 

Jesus, he doesn’t know what he did to deserve this woman.

 

He follows the drops of blood out of the alley, trying not to feel ridiculous for hunting down a 15-year-old kid, trying not to let his uneasiness dull his focus. He hovers a few floors up when the trail becomes less clear, and tries to think like a scared kid might. No phone, no wallet, no super suit … a worried aunt at home, waiting for him to get back …

 

Tony flies eastward, then down toward the Queensboro Bridge. He doesn’t get very far; about halfway there, walking along the river on a path closed for construction, is one limping, shadowed Spider-Man.  

 

He’s about to swoop down right in front of the kid, never one to shy from his slight flair for dramatic entrances, but Peter stops abruptly on the path and reaches out to grab the temporary chain-link fence and steady himself. As Tony closes the distance between them he can see the reason for it, glinting dark red on the kid’s side.

 

Tony lands beside him quietly, trying not to alarm him. It doesn’t quite work – Peter’s head jerks over to him when he sees a shadow, the eyes of his mask widening with alarm.

 

“Need a ride, kid?”

 

Peter immediately pulls his hand away from his side and strands up straight, or as straight as he can in his condition. He hesitates for a moment, and then sighs and says, “How pissed is Aunt May?”

 

“Let’s worry about that in a minute,” he says, pinging Pepper to let her know to call May. He steps out of the suit, and Peter does this little half-flinch at the sight of him in the flesh that makes Tony feel a pinch of guilt. “Let me take a look at that.”

 

“It’s fine,” says Peter quickly. “Gross, but fine.” 

 

“Someone shot you, kid. I’ll be the judge of that.”

 

“How do you …” Peter shakes his head as Tony examines it; it’s stopped bleeding, at least, from what Tony can see through the rip in his suit. He makes a mental note to get the thing in for repairs.

 

“It’s basically healed,” says Peter. “I can patch up whatever’s left when I get home.”

 

“Well, get in the car, anyway,” says Tony. “Your whole kicked puppy vibe isn’t good for PR.”

 

Right on cue, the self-driving car Pepper summoned pulls up beside them; Tony slides into the driver’s seat and jerks his head for Peter to get in the back, which he does, easing himself in gingerly and closing the door.

 

“I’m going to assume based on the fact that you didn’t immediately bombard me with questions about your suit’s tech being disabled that you were _very much aware_ that it happened,” Tony starts. “Care to explain?”

 

“Ned was supposed to turn it back on, but he got grounded,” says Peter, pulling off his mask and rifling around with the medical supplies in the back seat. 

 

“Who the hell is _Ned?_ ”

 

“My … guy in the chair,” says Peter, ripping open an antiseptic wipe with his teeth.

 

Tony decides not to even entertain whatever nonsense just came out of Peter’s mouth. He watches through the back window and Peter lets out an involuntary hiss at the antiseptic. “Also, don’t think you can dodge the question — how and why the hell is your suit offline?”

 

Peter pauses, then, and won’t look at him.

 

“Look, kid,” he says gruffly, feeling a strange kind of dejection, “if you really don’t want my tech — ”

 

“No, no, Mr. Stark, that’s not — no, I love the suit,” Peter blurts. “It was an accident, I swear — ”

 

“You don’t turn off that suit by _accident_ , kid.”

 

“No, what I mean is — I was going to turn it back on, but — ”

 

“Why the _hell_ was it off in the first place?” Tony demands. “Tell me the truth, kid. Don’t make me ask again.”

 

Peter is suddenly absurdly focused on the cracked screen of his broken phone, like he might be able to bring it back to life and use it to eject himself from the conversation. Then his eyes sweep up to meet Tony’s in the driver’s mirror, and all at once the answer is so clear that Tony doesn’t even need one.

 

“I’ll _kill_ him.”

 

Tony jerks the car around.

 

“Wh-where are we going?”

 

“Brooklyn.”

 

“Mr. Stark — ”

 

“Let me guess, kid,” says Tony, knuckling the steering wheel. “He told you I was _controlling_ you. He told you that I had you under my thumb, and that as soon as you disabled the suit — ”

 

“No, he just — said that it would be good, to be able to rely on instinct, like that weird sense I get sometimes? Instead of just — relying on the suit, I guess — it was only supposed to be for an hour, I didn’t even tell Steve I was doing it, and then Ned was gonna turn it right back on, I just — ”

 

The kid cuts off mid-sentence.

 

“Just _what_ , Peter?”

 

Peter is pale in the backseat. Too pale.

 

“Hey,” says Tony, stopping the car on the side of the road. “Kid, what’s going on?”

 

Peter opens his mouth to lie, a face Tony only knows so well because the kid makes it frequently and ineffectively, but he winces before he can say anything. His hand unconsciously makes its way back to his side, and Tony can see even in the relatively bad light of the car that now that all the blood has been wiped off the wound is an alarming, decidedly not healing muddle of purples and yellows and blues.

 

Tony puts the car in park and gets out of the driver’s seat. “What kind of bullet was it?” he asks, as he opens the door to the back and slides in next to Peter.

 

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know anything about guns. It was — it broke into pieces, but I fished them all out …”

 

“That’s mildly horrifying,” says Tony, turning on the overhead lights in the car brightly enough that they both wince. “Also, evidently you did not. F.R.I.D.A.Y., reroute to the medical facility on 59th.”

 

He’s expecting the kid to protest, but there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead now, and his jaw is tight. His anger feels too slippery to hold onto; he knows the kid is young, but he’s so determined and effusive and bullheaded that Tony sometimes forgets that he’s _young_.

 

“Listen, kid,” he says. “I’m going to let you in on something here — that suit is meant to keep you safe. If you’re going to be out, I want you in this suit. We’ll work on your … spidey sense, or whatever you want to call it, later. But when shit like this happens, someone needs to know and be able to get to you a hell of a lot faster than this. Understand?”

 

Peter casts his eyes town to the interior of the car. “I’m sorry you had to come get me.”

 

“I didn’t _have_ to do anything, kid,” says Tony, nudging him on the shoulder. “The measures are in place because we _want_ you safe.”

 

He leaves the kid in good hands at the small but capable Stark Industries medical facility. He hovers for a moment as they’re met by the doctor, not sure if the kid wants him to stay or not — not sure if it would be a weird overstep, a little too personal, a little too reminiscent of something a parent might do.

 

And he can’t be that for Peter. Peter deserves better than that — than someone who is here until he isn’t, someone who has too many obligations and priorities and does stupid things like forget to give him back his suit so he ends up singlehandedly downing a jet in pool goggles and a sweater he bought at a Rite Aid. Someone who might not even be around at all, considering the nature of his line of work.

 

He leaves instructions for Happy to pick Peter up and take him back home, then takes his trip to Brooklyn. Steve answers the door quickly enough that Tony knows he must have already been awake.

 

Tony doesn’t realize just how much he wants to deck Steve until he’s standing a foot away from him, Peter’s pale face still clear in his mind. Steve must immediately sense the full magnitude of his fury, because he stiffens like he might have to anticipate a blow.

 

“Let me get one thing straight: all of my involvement in Peter Parker’s life is to keep him safe.”

 

Steve scowls. “And mine isn’t?”

 

“Not if you’re planting ideas in his head like disengaging the suit I designed with _extreme_ _precision_ to keep him from becoming roadkill, it’s not.”

 

“So he disabled the suit,” says Steve, his eyebrows raised like he’s a little impressed.

 

“Yeah,” says Tony tersely, “and then he got shot.”

 

It’s almost satisfying, how fast the smug look wipes off Steve’s face. “Is he — “

 

“And then, because his tracking signal had been disabled, and there was nothing to alert anyone to a change in his vital signs, nobody knew how to find him for over an hour.”

 

“Tony, is he — ”

 

“He’ll be fine, no thanks to you,” says Tony.

 

Steve actually looks contrite. Tony wasn’t planning on that in the loose script of this encounter he built on the way over here.

 

“I didn’t think …”

 

“Damn straight, you didn’t,” says Tony. “He’s a _kid_ , Rogers. He shouldn’t even be out there at all — “

 

“Says the guy who brought him to _Germany_ — “

 

“But he’s going to be, with or without our help. He’s as stupid as the rest of us,” says Tony, feeling stupidly proud of said stupidity. “Least we can do is keep him safe.”

 

There’s a beat where neither of them speaks.

 

“And if we have different ideas of how to do that?” Steve asks.

 

Tony’s fists cock at his sides. “Then that’s too fucking bad,” he says. “Push me on anything else, but do _not_ push me on this.”

 

He leaves, then, and Steve lets him, because they both know what’s going to happen if they don’t — that this is going to escalate the way that it always does, and fracture in some new, terrible way on top of fractures that already will never quite heal. And maybe they could afford that then, but not now — not with the kid on the line. Not with all the rumors and trouble brewing on the horizon, so far beyond them in their scope that neither of them can really fathom it. Not with the way their world is now.

 

He reengages the suit and flies back upstate. Later he discovers Pepper must be more liberal with his personal number than he is, because wakes up to a a text the next morning from a number in Queens with a picture of Peter snoring on the couch, and two words under it: _Thank you_.

 

He hears those words a lot, but they've never meant quite as much or felt quite as heavy as they do now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys all so much again. There may be a tad bit of a delay (trust me, this will NOT get abandoned, so help me Thor) in the next day or so — incidentally, I write on the internet and write fiction for human money, so I gotta do that, too. But if there does end up being a day or so before the next chapter, just know you are all in my emoji heart, and that I love you very much and sometimes cry a happy tear at your reviews as I read them in the bathroom stall at work. <3 <3 <3.


	4. four

Tony resents every nerve in his body responsible for calling Steve Rogers’ number on a Sunday afternoon, but he doesn’t see a way to avoid it, either.

 

“Hello?” Steve asks, understandably wary.

 

“I’m going to be out of touch for a few weeks.”  

 

Steve doesn’t answer for a moment. “Okay.”

 

“Like, really out of touch. No phone, no internet. No way to contact me. I thought I’d let you know, in case anything comes up.”

 

This could mean any number of things, of course, but they both know it really only means one.

 

“You want me to keep an eye on Pete.”

 

 _Pete_. Tony isn’t sure what rubs him the wrong way, the nickname, or the casual ease of it coming out of Rogers’ mouth.

 

“No, I’ve got Happy on it,” says Tony.

 

There’s a beat. “I’ll keep an eye on him,” says Steve.

 

Tony doesn’t want to thank him, so instead he ends the call with a flippant, “Do what you want.”

 

And that’s the end of that.

 

Peter, predictably, is far less accepting on Tony’s explanation — “Where are you going? Is it dangerous? Do you need backup?” — but Tony shuts him down before he can entertain any of those ideas. The truth is, Tony will be unreachable because the U.N. is in talks with SHIELD about how to handle the potential threats on the horizon; multiple space agencies, including Tony’s own tech, have been detecting radio signals from lightyears away, and only in the last few days did a translator claim that one could be interpreted as a threat.

 

In an abundance of caution, everyone who is scrambling to interpret the rest of the messages and decipher what is coming is being relegated to a bunker where transmissions of their own can’t get leaked. They have no idea what they’re dealing with, just enough of an idea from the distance it’s being sent that they have some time.

 

After an exhausting and generally unproductive three weeks of work, Tony returns back to the new Avengers Tower. He spends most of the day checking on projects, making the necessary calls, and catching up with Pepper (and then catching up with her again for good measure), then he grabs a cup of coffee and logs onto his computer to check the dropbox where Happy puts all of the voicemails and texts Peter leaves.

 

Tony blinks, wondering if there’s been a mistake. There are only five voicemails; the last one was 17 days ago. Even the texts are ridiculously sparse, almost coming to a halt at the exact same point.

 

Tony scrolls through them. For once, it’s Happy who has to prompt a response from Peter — responses that are almost always uniform. _All good!_ or _Got it!_ or _Nothing to report!_ Too many exclamation points and too much respect for the basic conventions of grammar to look anything like a normal Peter Parker text.

 

So something happened, then. Something happened 17 days ago, and it only takes a few seconds to find out what.

 

Tony pulls up the news mentions of Spider-Man and sees that only a few days after his departure, another incident involving alien tech and illegal arms dealers ripped up a sizable half mile in Maryland, just outside of the Department of Damage Control facility. Apparently containing the situation was enough of a problem that they sent a jet to bring in reinforcements — including Captain America, the Falcon, and one unregistered, underage, overeager Spider-Man.

 

So much for _keeping an eye on him_.

 

Usually Tony has the immediate satisfaction of channeling his rage, but he can’t quite focus it yet — half of him is on his way to Brooklyn to tear Steve a new one, and the other is still scanning the screen, looking for mentions of Spider-Man anywhere on social media. Most of them are just tweets from people wondering where he is; a headline from Gothamist a few days ago reads, _Did Spider-Man retire?_

 

Steve can wait. This, Tony senses, cannot.

 

Peter picks up on the second ring. “You’re back?” he asks, so excitedly that Tony doesn’t realize until he hears it that he missed this, whatever the hell this is they’ve got.

 

“That I am,” he says. “How are things down in Queens?”

 

There’s a beat. “Good, good, they’re good,” says the kid. He clears his throat. “Super busy. Um — decathlon, and … school and stuff. How was … whatever the super secret thing was that you were doing?”

 

“Still super secret, is how it was. Hey, I’m coming to the city tonight. Want to grab a slice?”

 

“Like a pizza slice?”

 

“Are you crazy Gen Z punks over pizza now? Only hybrid foods? Donut pizzas and and burger smoothies?”

 

Peter lets out a breathy laugh and says, “Um, no, pizza is … good. Pizza’s great.”

 

The pizza is actually terrible, at least by Tony’s standards. He’s expecting the kid to wolf his down in his typical graceless teenage manner anyway, but instead he eats about half a slice and picks at it, seeming 80 percent more fidget-prone than usual.

 

That being said, there was something off about Peter from the moment Tony met him at the pizza joint; bad fluorescent lighting aside, his hair is a little too scruffy, his face a little too pale, the purple under his eyes darker than a little late night studying. Tony watches him carefully as he rattles off about anything and everything that isn’t whatever the hell went down in Maryland, and eventually figures if they’re going to talk about it, Tony’s going to have to bring it up himself.

 

“Let’s take a walk.”

 

Peter’s brow furrows for the slightest moment, like he knows what’s coming, but he gets up anyway, fist-bumping the cashier on his way out. The cold December air hits them as they walk out, and Peter immediately shoves his hoodie back over his head and his hands in his pockets, seeming to actively distance himself from Tony.

 

Granted that Tony _invented_ actively distancing himself from people, he doesn’t think it’s going to make much of a difference.

 

“Tell me about Maryland.”

 

Peter flinches almost imperceptibly. “It was my idea,” he says quickly. “To go, I mean.”

 

Tony lifts his hands in surrender. “I’m not mad, kid.” And then, because he can’t help himself: “Well, not at you.”

 

“Steve said it was fine if I didn’t go,” says Peter.

 

“Yeah, but he asked you, didn’t he?”

 

Peter scuffs his foot at some invisible object on the sidewalk. “I mean, yeah, he asked if I could help,” he says. “Because of the Vulture and everything. But I — I wanted to go. It was my fault.”

 

“What exactly was your _fault_ , Peter?”

 

The kid blinks at him, surprised at being so directly addressed. And then the rest of the question sinks in, and he looks down at the pavement so fast that anyone else might think he almost tripped.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he mumbles.

 

“Sit down, kid.”

 

“Huh?”

 

Tony gestures to a bench outside of the mostly empty park they’re walking by; Peter almost seems a little surprised to find them there. Tony sits and motions again for Peter to sit next to him, and after a moment he does, his lips in a thin line.

 

“Listen,” says Tony, “I know you haven’t been patrolling. And you look like you spent the last two weeks playing hopscotch with the grim reaper. So obviously something happened in Maryland.”

 

Tony can’t quite see Peter’s face through the side of the hoodie, but he doesn’t need to; he already knows the kid doesn’t plan on answering anytime soon. He lets Peter have his way on that for a good solid minute, listening in the distance as parents start collecting their kids to get home before dark, as the bite of late autumn wind hits them.

 

“Hey. Whatever it is, kid, maybe I can help.”

 

Peter shakes his head so fast that it almost startles Tony. “No, you can’t,” he says, and then looks at Tony with this stricken expression, like he hadn’t meant to say it. He turns away just as fast and says, “It’s … it can’t be undone. It’s finished. The whole thing. I don’t — I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t — I can’t — “

 

Tony doesn’t anticipate that the kid will get up from the bench and start walking away from him, but he’s up in a flash, yanking the hood back down on his face.

 

“Whoa, hey,” says Tony, on his feet a second later. He puts  a hand on Peter’s shoulder to stop him, and Peter turns to look at him, not quite pulling away. “Kid, just tell me.”

 

Peter’s eyes are red-rimmed, his expression knotted with pain. “Somebody _died_ ,” he says. “One of the guys we were going down to contain. He was just — on the roof shooting at us, and then he tripped — and I tried to save him, but I … I couldn’t get to him fast enough, and now he’s _dead_.”

 

At first Tony isn’t even sure what to say. It feels like someone just knocked the wind out of him.

 

Peter is shaking, directing the words to the ground instead of at him. “I don’t — I don’t know who he was, or if he — if he was someone’s husband, or someone’s _dad_ , or …” He takes a breath, collecting himself enough to look Tony in the eye and ask, “How am I supposed to just _live_ with that?”

 

 _You can’t_ , Tony thinks immediately, his chest tight with it. And then: _I’m still trying to figure that out_.

 

He swallows down the voices in his head and takes a step forward, putting his hands on the kid’s shoulders, bracing him there.

 

“This is how you live with it,” he says. “You know that for every person you don’t save, there are a hundred more that you do. You know that there are people depending on you who wouldn’t have a chance if you weren’t there. You know that you can’t save everyone, and you relearn it over and over and over again.”

 

Peter winces, like he can’t bear the thought of it. Even with his hands on the kid’s shoulders he can feel him folding into himself, like the world is too heavy around him. It’s a feeling Tony knows all too well.

 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to do this anymore. You have the right.”

 

Tony pauses. He understands that this is one of those _moments_ , the kind that’s going to stick with the kid long after he’s gone. It feels like there is too much in the balance, like someone else should be here saying these things to him.

 

He thinks of the way Peter’s voice splintered on the words “someone’s _dad”_. He remembers that there is nobody else.

 

“But don’t let this be the reason,” says Tony. “You’re good, Peter. A good person. And I think you know deep down that what happened wasn’t remotely your fault.”

 

Peter shakes his head, a tear rolling down his cheek. Tony wonders if maybe he should hug the kid, or do something to make him understand the words and not just hear them, but Peter swipes at the tear like he’s angry at it and pulls away and Tony loses his nerve.

 

“What if I …  ” he says to Tony helplessly, like he needs him to finish the sentence for him.

 

“Hey,” says Tony, taking a step back, giving him some space. “You drop this all tomorrow, everything will be fine. You’ll … do whatever you nerd kids do at that school, and come intern for Stark Industries for real. Heck, maybe we even decide to pay you. Don’t hold me to it.”

 

Peter’s watching him like he can’t quite believe what he’s saying.

 

Tony stares at him unblinkingly. “But I think we both know there’s not a world where that happens, kid.”

 

He walks Peter home and tells him to get some sleep, and Peter nods a little too vigorously. There’s none of his usual “bye, Mr. Stark” or “thanks, Mr. Stark” — he walks back up the front steps of his apartment building, his hands still in his pockets, and doesn’t look back.

 

Tony lingers for a moment after he disappears behind the doors. The plan was to head straight to Brooklyn and knock the stars and spangles out of Steve’s face. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Peter Parker has pushed his plans off track.

 

He calls Steve. Before the other man can so much as say hello, Tony says, “We need to talk.”

 

He has Steve meet him in a Stark Industries facility in midtown. He can sense Steve’s unwillingness to meet anywhere that is decidedly Tony’s territory, but Tony has good reason for it. He wants this to be public enough that if this escalates, they both have to keep themselves in check.

 

Now that he has a sense of what’s on the horizon, they can’t afford to divide themselves anymore than they already have.

 

When Steve walks into the office he seems surprised to see Tony sitting down in front of a screen, with an empty seat next to him. Tony gestures for him to sit.

 

“Look,” Steve starts, “I’m not sure why you want to see me, but — “ He pauses, looking at the image Tony has pulled up on the screen. “Who are these people?”

 

He asks a little nervously, and Tony knows why – it’s the same ghost in the kid’s eyes, the same burden Tony has carried his whole life. _Is this somebody we hurt? Is this somebody we didn’t save?_

 

“They’re Peter Parker’s parents,” says Tony.

 

The couple is posed in front of a bustling conference lobby, Richard Parker’s smile reserved and friendly, Mary’s small and sly. It is still startling to Tony just how much Peter looks every inch their kid, even if he lacks the quiet, grounded quality the two of them shared. In that regard, Tony thinks, he must be every bit May.

 

“They worked with you,” Steve immediately understands.

 

Tony nods. “We were all close. His parents were revered genetic scientists. They died too soon.”

 

Steve bows his head down for a moment in respect, and Tony bristles uncomfortably; he hadn’t meant to make this about him. What he needs is for Steve to understand.

 

“I didn’t just pluck Spider-Man out of the blue and recruit him. I’ve been checking in on Peter periodically since he was four years old,” says Tony. “I knew he was out in the streets doing the whole Spider-Man bit a full year ago, when he hadn’t even come up with that ridiculous name for himself yet. I was a stranger to Peter when I took him to Germany, but trust me — he was no stranger to me.”

 

“I didn’t know.”

 

“So I’m telling you,” says Tony. “I know that kid. I know what he can and can’t handle. And things like whatever just went down in Maryland, when he was on your watch? He isn’t ready for that.”

 

Steve considers this for a moment. “He did great out there,” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t understand what you — “

 

“He’s never watched someone die, Rogers. He’s _fifteen_.” When Steve doesn’t seem to fully register, Tony says, “One of the men you were hunting down fell, I guess. Kid’s been walking around like a prepubescent ghost ever since.”

 

“I didn’t realize,” says Steve, looking genuinely upset about it. “I can talk to him — “

 

“I already did,” says Tony, too quickly. He forces himself to take a beat. “I just — I need you to get it. The kid’s not a crutch. He’s too young to be involved.”

 

For a moment, Steve doesn’t say anything. Tony braces himself for what’s coming — Steve will throw Germany in his face again, and Tony won’t even be able to rationalize it, because yeah, maybe it _was_ wrong of him to rope Peter into it — but instead Steve looks at him with a disconcerting kind of weight.

 

“Tony, I may not be on the … _inside_ anymore, the way you are. But I still have contacts. I know what’s coming.” His face is set in that grim, determined line that Tony remembers seeing on memorabilia and posters long before he had to look at it in the flesh. “I know what we’re preparing for.”

 

Tony pulls the picture off the screen. “Peter’s not going to be a part of it.”

 

“You don’t get to decide that,” says Steve.

 

“And you _do?_ ” Tony demands.

 

“No, I don’t,” says Steve, refusing to raise his voice and take the bait. “Peter does.”

 

“Like hell he does,” says Tony, the very anger he’s been trying to push down suddenly simmering on that familiar, dangerous surface. 

 

“Tony, you may have the suit and the tech and want what’s best for him, but you’re not in charge of him,” says Steve. When Tony doesn’t react, he says, his voice low in a way that immediately puts Tony on edge, “You’re not his father.”

 

“I’m the closest thing he’s got.”

 

He wishes he could take it back the moment he says it, but there it is anyway — the inevitability he has been trying to avoid since the day he first walked into the Parker apartment, and if he’s being honest with himself, even earlier than that.

 

But Steve doesn’t question him any further, doesn’t rub any salt in that wound. “Then you know him well enough to know you can’t keep him from this,” he says instead.

 

Tony thinks of all the times he’s told the kid “no” and he’s somehow interpreted it as “yes, but quietly so I don’t get caught,” and he knows Steve is right.

 

“He needs to be prepared,” says Steve. “He needs to be training with us, and going out on missions like the one in Maryland. He needs to be able to hold his own, but more than that, he needs to be able to work with a _team_.”

 

Tony wishes in that moment that he’d never talked to Peter. That he’d never gotten close enough to him to pull him into this circle in the first place.

 

But then again, he knows if he hadn’t, Peter would be long dead by now.

 

“I asked him if he wanted to be an Avenger, a few months back,” says Tony. “He said he wasn’t ready.”

 

“None of us are ready for what’s coming,” says Steve. “You know if he knew the circumstances, he’d change his mind in a heartbeat.”

 

Tony does know that. He also knows the scary amount of influence he has on the kid. Unlike Steve, though, he has been very determined in the last few months to try not to use it.

 

“Whatever we decide, we decide together,” says Tony. “You can’t go over my head on this. Not with Peter.”

 

Steve nods, sensing that the argument has shifted in his favor. “Understood.”

 

Tony leaves with the same mounting uneasiness he’s had in his chest for months, staring up into the cloudy, starless New York sky and thinking of places he never should have been. He’s about to summon a car — he’s really not in the mood for flying tonight — when a news alert from F.R.I.D.A.Y. lights up in the peripheral.

 

 _Spider-Man’s back from vacation, y’all!!!!_ reads the tweet, along with a video of the kid swooping low off a building in the Village.

 

Tony can’t decide whether or not to be relieved.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience. I went back and forth on how I wanted to do this chapter a bajillion times, and then it ended up being super long, and well, you know how it goes. Also I have struck a new deal with myself wherein I wrote 1,000 words of my actual writing for every 1,000 words I write of this because apparently adulthood is disciplining yourself like an unruly toddler, WHO KNEW????? 
> 
> In any case, HAPPY THURSDAY, and bless the weekend for being so close on the horizon.


	5. five

The door to Tony’s office slides open to let Peter in, and as soon as he sees them waiting for him, his mouth drops.

 

 

“Come on in, kid,” says Tony, jerking his head toward the empty chair. 

 

Peter’s eyes shift between Tony and Steve, where the two of them are sitting next to each other on Tony’s side of the desk. 

 

“Uh,” says Peter, looking behind him to see Happy’s retreating form. He turns back to them like he just watched the last lifeboat float away on the Titanic. “Is this a trap?” 

 

Steve smirks. “Take a seat, Pete. We have something we want to talk to you about.” 

 

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” says Peter, walking over to the empty chair. He’s about to sit in it, his eyes wary, when he startles back up and says, “For the  _ record _ , I wasn’t the one who broke that fire hydrant. I know the headline said that I did, and jumping into the spray looked a little, uh, incriminating, but it was super hot that day, and anyway, that was totally not — ”

 

“For the love of god, kid, please sit down before I die of secondhand embarrassment,” says Tony, waving him off. 

 

“Yeah, gotcha, cool.” 

 

There are a few beats then, when nobody says anything. Tony knows Steve is waiting for him to initiate the conversation, but the trouble is, Tony still doesn’t want to. After they ask Peter this, they can’t take it back.

 

Of course, the longer they sit here in silence, the more Peter starts to resemble a man on death row facing a firing squad, which eventually forces Tony’s hand. 

 

“We want you to consider … training with the rest of the Avengers.” 

 

Tony had been hoping against hope that Peter would make this easier on him by hesitating, but Peter’s eyes light up like traffic lights.  _ Traitor _ . 

 

“Like, training here? In the tower? With like — ”

 

“Yes, that would be the idea,” says Tony, bristling. 

 

He ignores Steve’s pointed look. Let Steve be the one to push it, not him. 

 

“What we mean is, Pete, we were hoping you would join the team on a more official basis.” 

 

“Oh,” says Peter. The excitement is still there, but Tony can sense the hesitation, the confusion. The kid’s looking right at him — for what? For permission? And then Tony realizes he is looking for exactly that. 

 

Tony doesn’t want to look at him, so he just nods. 

 

“Whoa,” says Peter after a second. “If you don’t mind me asking … just, um — why? I mean, why now?” 

 

It’s only been a few months since he turned Tony down the first time, and only a few weeks since the kid tried to walk away from Spider-Man for good. The timing is terrible. Then again, it was always going to be — there’s no real way to prepare for this. 

 

“In all honesty, kid, something’s coming,” says Tony. “We don’t know what it is yet, but we need all the hands we can get.” 

 

“Something’s … coming?” Peter repeats. “Do you, uh, have anything more to go on than that?” 

 

“Unfortunately, not much,” says Steve. “The threat is coming from deep space.” 

 

Oh, Jesus. The kids’ eyes are going to bulge out of his head. “That’s so — I mean, not cool. That’s not cool,” he corrects himself, “that’s bad. But holy  _ shit _ .” 

 

Tony lifts a hand in an attempt to rein him in. 

 

“So you want me to join the Avengers so we can fight aliens,” says Peter. 

 

Tony makes sure to look the kid right in the eye as he says, “You can say no.” 

 

It’s Peter who looks away first, toward the backpack he has propped on the floor. For a moment it feels like nobody moves or breathes, like the office is strangely suspended in time — this moment when Peter is an Avenger and is not, this moment that could easily seal all three of their fates. 

 

Peter’s expression is entirely resolved when he looks back up at the two of them, and says firmly, “I’m in.” 

 

Steve nods. Tony doesn’t. 

 

“What do I have to do?” 

 

“You’re staying in school,” says Tony firmly, before Peter can ask. 

 

Peter straightens up in that antsy way of his, and says, “Yeah, yeah, of course. School and — secretly being an Avenger.” 

 

“Well, it wouldn’t be a secret,” says Steve. “That’s part of the deal, with the Accords. You’d have to go on the record with your civilian identity.” 

 

Tony speaks before Peter can so much as open his mouth: “Absolutely not.” 

 

Steve lets out a half-laugh, half-scoff of surprise. “Wait, you’re kidding, right?” 

 

“Do I look like I’m kidding? The kid’s not going public,” he says. 

 

Steve lowers his voice, as if it will make a difference to the painfully attentive set of teenage ears sitting across from them. “Were you or were you not the one who — ”

 

“This is a clear exception. We can’t account for the security involved — his school would become a target in an instant and put hundreds of minors at risk.” 

 

“So we pull him out of that school — “

 

“That was never on the table.” 

 

“Um,” Peter interrupts, “sorry, could I just — um — think about it, maybe? The going public part, I mean. School aside, I don’t … necessarily want the world knowing how old I am. Or how to find my aunt.” 

 

Steve takes a breath to say something, but Tony cuts him off. 

 

“We’re tabling this discussion,” he says. “You’ll only be training for now anyway. Five days a week after school and on Saturdays. We’ll worry about it when we go public.”  

 

“What about patrolling?” Peter asks. 

 

“We’re going to have to put it on hold for now,” says Steve. “Trust us, Pete. There are much bigger things to worry about now.” 

 

Again, Peter looks at Tony, like he’s searching his face for something. Whatever it is, Tony can’t give it to him. He wishes he weren’t here having this discussion at all. 

 

“Okay,” says Peter. “Um — when do we start?” 

 

“Next week being your spring break, we were thinking it would be best to have you stay in the tower to get to know everyone,” says Steve.  

 

Peter nods animatedly, then chews the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Uh, just out of curiosity,” he says, addressing Steve, “there aren’t any … hard feelings about Germany, right?” 

 

Steve actually laughs. “Trust me, Pete, you’re fine.” 

 

“Anything else, or can we let the kid go about his business?” says Tony, before it gets too chummy in here. 

 

“Yeah,” says Peter. “I know it’s not — how things are really done here. But I was wondering if it’s okay if the team just knows me as Spider-Man for now? And not Peter Parker?” 

 

Even Tony doesn’t know quite what to make of that. 

 

“Pete,” says Steve, in that patient way he has when he’s talking to pretty much anybody who isn’t Tony, “if you’re going to be a part of the team, we’re all going to have to trust each other. Is there some reason you feel like you can’t?” 

 

It’s the first time Tony’s seen Peter intentionally mouth off at either of them, and he can’t help but be a little proud. 

 

“Uh … no offense, but you guys were basically tearing each other limb from limb the last time I saw everyone.” Peter clears his throat. “Also, I’ve literally never met anyone apart from you.” 

 

Tony knows he has to take the reins on this one. “And you trust us, don’t you?” 

 

Peter seems a little startled by the question. “Of course,” he says, so adamantly that Tony feels bad for asking it. “I just — I don’t want anyone pulling their punches on me, or asking about my homework, or …” Peter clears his throat, the sound just boyish enough to highlight the absurdity of his next words: “I don’t want to be a  _ kid _ to them. I want to be a teammate.” 

 

Steve sighs. “Look, Pete. I see where you’re coming from — “

 

“Please,” says Peter. “Just — at least for now.” 

 

Another beat passes. Steve hesitates, and Tony seizes on the silence. 

 

“For now, then,” says Tony. “Now get back home and talk this over with your aunt. If she has any questions tell her she can take it up with Captain America.” 

 

“Oh, man, I can’t do that,” says Peter. “She has  _ such _ a big crush on — ”

 

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” 

 

* * *

 

Peter shows up to the first day of training with a look in his eyes reminiscent of a kindergartener whose parents just shoved him out of his booster seat into an eel pit, and the determination and resolve of someone much older than 15. 

 

“Don’t be nervous, the other kids won’t bite,” says Tony, clapping him on the back. 

 

“I’m not nervous,” says Peter, nervously. 

 

The days are scheduled in a certain way long before Peter arrives. In the morning, Steve and Sam lead a group of them out on a long run. Then it’s strength exercises and hand-to-hand combat practice out on the lawn, led by Natasha, and target practice led by Clint. They break for lunch, and that’s when things get rough — guided scenarios in the bulletproof, insanely impenetrable virtual reality room, where they often divide into teams and or take each other on one-on-one, like infinite versions of Germany. Toward the end of the day, Wanda insists on leading a meditation that most of them have to actively try not to fall asleep during. Then they eat dinner and head off in their separate directions for the night. 

 

At first the team clearly has no idea what to make of Peter. Tony watches as they come back from the first run with an uncanny kind of quiet, as a few of them side eye Peter in his ridiculous full Spider-Man getup while the rest of them are in activewear. 

 

“I’m not sure I’m following,” says Sam, his eyes narrow on Peter on the first day of training. “Do you not have a name?” 

 

“Um, yeah. It’s Spider-Man.” 

 

“Your parents just looked at you and said, ‘I don’t know, Roger seems too boring, let’s call him Spider-Man’?”

 

“Well when you come out looking like this …” says Peter, gesturing to himself and earning an unexpected laugh out of a few members of the team. 

 

It’s a tiny ice breaker, but it opens the floodgates. Peter leans back into his usual borderline intolerably chipper self and within minutes has gained the favor of everyone on the team. If Tony was worried that the mask was going to make things weird, Peter’s awkward brand of charm manages to make up for it before it even really has a chance to come up. 

 

That is, until their first lunch, when they’re all eating pizza and Peter slides just half the mask off to start shoveling his into his mouth. 

 

“What is this all about?” asks Wanda, plucking at the seams of the mask. 

 

“Uh,” says Peter, ducking out of her grasp. “Just, um — part of my whole look.” 

 

Wanda tilts her head at him suspiciously. 

 

“Leave the spider punk alone,” says Tony from the other end of the kitchen. 

 

Wanda doesn’t. “Huh,” she says, her face softening a bit before walks over to the pizza box to grab another slice. She makes brief eye contact with Tony, who shakes his head at her. She acts like she doesn’t see it, but that’s all the answer he needs that Wanda, at least, won’t spill the beans about the kid. 

 

Well, at least not to anyone who isn’t Vision. Granted, Vision probably knew before Peter walked through the doors. 

 

The two of them aren’t all that social anyway, which just leaves the rest of the team to wonder why their new recruit is totally down to hang after a long day of training, but only in a fully head to toe spandex body suit while the rest of them are in sweats and t-shirts.

 

The longer it goes on, the more ridiculous it gets, until it has become the running joke of the team. They compensate by calling him Spidey and Underoos when Spider-Man seems too formal. They take a cue from his aggressive dedication to staying in his getup and don’t ask him anything about his personal life. At one point Wanda even nudges the kid when he gets a little  _ too _ into his Pad Thai and his mask starts riding up. 

 

By the end of the week, to Tony’s relief, the kid’s actually part of the group. On one morning run he yells “On your left!” in a way too cheeky not to be intentional and promptly gets tackled by Sam. That evening Clint somehow talks him into watching two Jason Bourne movies. He talks Vision’s ear off about the paradox of determinism and free will (“What?” he says to Tony later, “I might as well get some help with my homework while there’s a walking supercomputer next door.”). Natasha calls him her fellow Spider In Arms, and gently explains to Peter that the element of surprise in battle generally means keeping your running monologue to yourself (not that it discourages Peter from doing just that, even a little). 

 

Natasha doesn’t press the point for a few days, but does pull Tony aside one afternoon. 

 

“Is there some reason he doesn’t trust us?” she asks.

 

Tony looks across the room at Peter, who’s sparring with Wanda and a little bit getting his ass kicked. 

 

“No,” says Tony, trying to play it off as casually as he can. “He’s just skittish.” 

 

Natasha considers this. “Is there some reason we shouldn’t trust  _ him? _ ” 

 

Tony shakes his head. “For better or for worse, I’d trust him with my life and anyone’s here.” 

 

It is particularly bad but fitting timing that Peter chooses to yell “Holy freaking guacamole!” at that exact moment as Wanda levitates him straight into a tree, but Natasha still takes Tony’s endorsement to heart. 

 

The trouble is, though, that Steve is right. They can’t go on like this, with Peter so jumpy that he all but sleeps in the mask. Tony figured by the end of the week he’d be comfortable enough to shed the suit during their downtime and relax on the whole secret identity thing; the whole reason why Steven was so willing to bench the topic is because he must have believed that, too. But by that Friday night, Peter hasn’t made any indication that he plans on shedding the mask. 

 

Tony plans on stopping by Peter’s quarters after dinner, but when he’s walking down the hallway, he sees that Steve’s beaten him to the punch. 

 

“Look, Pete, with school starting back up again next week, people are going to wonder where you are,” says Steve. 

 

Peter misses the point completely. “So I won’t go to school,” he says. 

 

“Nope,” says Tony from the doorway, making Peter jump. “No high school dropouts on the Avengers.” 

 

Peter frowns. “I’m pretty sure like half the team didn’t even  _ go _ to high school.”  

 

“New rule, starting now.” 

 

“But — ”

 

“What I meant is that the others … it might be helpful if they understood why you were gone,” says Steve. “I think the past week has shown you that you are more than welcome on this team.” 

 

“You want me to take off the mask,” says Peter. 

 

Steve just stares at him in that knowing, patient way — that “I’m waiting for you to make the right decision, kid” way that every teacher or would-be role model tried to use on Tony when he was growing up. Instead of riling Peter, though, the kid seems to shrink under it. For a moment Tony thinks he might just roll over. 

 

“I … can I just think about it?” asks Peter. 

 

Steve crosses his arms over his chest. “The sooner, the better, is what I think.” 

 

“He can decide for himself,” says Tony. Unwilling to let another fight escalate in front of Peter, he adds, “He’s the one who has to live with a 24 hour wedgie if he doesn’t.” 

 

That earns a breathy little laugh from Peter. 

 

“I think you’ll be relieved once you let it go, Pete. You’ll see,” says Steve. 

 

He heads out, then, leaving Tony in the open doorway. Peter looks at him apprehensively, the chemistry book still balanced in his lap the way it must have been when Steve first walked in. Tony sighs. 

 

“As much as I hate agreeing with Rogers on anything, he’s right,” says Tony. “Now for the love of god, let someone launder that suit before your skin starts growing into it, will you?” 

 

Tony knows the conversation is far from over, but he assumes that when it picks up again it will be in the relative privacy of his office or Peter’s quarters. Steve, it seems, has other ideas. The next day the team is in the middle of their afternoon rounds fighting one-on-one when Tony comes back from a call to D.C. to Steve taking matters into his own hands. 

 

Tony’s only half-watching out of the corner of his eye as Steve manages to leverage the biocables Peter has stuck to his shield to ricochet Peter up to the ceiling, where he only just manages to stick the landing. 

 

“Better luck next time, Peter,” says Steve, loudly. 

 

The whole room seems to dim into an uncharacteristic quiet. Already Tony can feel his blood starting to boil, can feel the itch to engage his full suit. He knows it was no accident; Steve never calls the kid Peter. Always Pete. 

 

“Peter?” Clint asks, lowering his arrow. 

 

Peter, for his part, is still paralyzed on the ceiling. “Uh,” he says. 

 

“Sorry,” says Steve, with overblown sheepishness. “I meant Spider-Man.” 

 

“Like hell you didn’t,” says Tony. He doesn’t mean for it to carry across the gym, but he wasn’t planning on backing down whether or not he attracted the attention of the rest of the team. “We talked about this.” 

 

“Wait, Steve knows who Spider-Man is, too?” Sam asks. “Also, no offense, Peter’s a much better name than Spider-Man.” 

 

“Thanks,” says Peter weakly, from up above their heads. 

 

“Change in rotation,” says Tony, walking across the gym. He looks up at Peter. “You’re up against Sam. Cap and I will take it from here.” 

 

“ _ That _ seems super unnecessary,” says Natasha. 

 

“Yeah, gonna go ahead and second that,” says Clint. 

 

Peter pipes up then, evidently webbing down from the ceiling. “Um, thirding — ”

 

Tony doesn’t hear whatever he says after that as the Iron Man suit reengages around him and he throws the first punch. It’s heated and it’s angry and he can see in the periphery as the other team members back out of their way, but at least this time, there’s nothing dirty about the fight. He’s not even sure if there’s any real malice behind it — he knows that Steve has good intentions, but they  _ talked _ about this. They’ve  _ been _ talking about this. And when it comes to Peter — 

 

Tony’s knocked off course when a hit from the shield hits him directly in the chest and actually manages to cause some damage, nearly knocking Tony into the wall and leaving him breathless for a moment. It’s a little too close to Siberia for comfort, and they both know it. Even Steve seems to pause for a moment.

 

They should just end it right here. By now everyone has moved on from their side show; Sam and Peter are going toe-to-toe in the corner, Natasha and Wanda are sparring on the other side of the room, and Vision and Clint are off somewhere behind them. 

 

But it all comes simmering back —  _ Better luck next time, Peter _ . The kid bleeding in the back of his car with a disabled suit. The kid staring at him with hardened, red-rimmed eyes outside of a park in Queens. Every moment over the last year that Tony has tried to do right by Peter’s parents and do right by  _ Peter _ to keep him safe, compromised in seconds, reminding Tony that there are too many things  _ he can’t control _ . 

 

He propels himself at Steve again, and Steve is so unprepared for it that it knocks the shield out of his hands and launches it into the air with the terrifying speed and force Tony knew it would have — after all, he was the one who designed its replacement. He lifts his arm anticipating a blow, but Steve has come to a complete stop, his eyes on the back wall.

 

Tony turns around just in time to see what’s about to happen, with absolutely no time to stop it. Sam and Peter are going at it up in the air, and the shield is on an immovable course right for them. In the next split second it slams into Peter’s midsection, hurtling him toward the wall with enough force that, for all of its enhanced protections, it leaves a dent. 

 

There’s a moment when Tony hopes against hope that the kid will scramble up the wall or shoot a web or do literally anything to indicate that they didn’t just knock him out cold, but he slides to the ground with a thunk that echoes through the room. 

 

“ _ Shit _ ,” Tony mutters. 

 

Sam reaches him first, retracting his wings and running the last few feet over to him. “Hey,” he says, and before he can even pause to see if Peter will react, he looks up and yells, “We need medical.” 

 

Tony sees why as soon as he reaches them — never mind what it undoubtedly did to the kid’s ribs, but his arm is so clearly broken that Tony can see bone protruding from under the suit. His stomach churns as he kneels down next to Sam, pulling the kid’s mask off without thinking. 

 

Peter’s face is pale and slack, the blood from where his head must have slammed into the wall streaming over one of his eyes. 

 

“Peter,” says Tony, shaking him on his good shoulder. “Hey. Kid.” 

 

Nothing. Tony feels a knot of panic in his chest, trying to thumb the stream of blood out of the kid’s eye, hoping for some kind of groan or a flinch or — 

 

“Jesus,” says Clint, skidding to a stop as he reaches them. “How  _ old _ is he?” 

 

“Tony,” says Natasha in a low voice, obviously echoing the sentiment. 

 

“Everyone back up,” says Steve, “give him some room.” Tony doesn’t try to stop him from crouching down beside him, but almost wishes he had when Steve says quietly, “I can’t tell if he’s breathing.” 

 

Tony can’t, either.  _ Fuck _ . He designed that shield to incapacitate, he just never thought it would be used on — 

 

“The wind’s been knocked out of him,” says Wanda, the reproach clear in her voice. 

 

Just then Peter takes a shallow, shuddering breath, the pain of it jolting him awake. Tony has to lower his head for a moment, the relief so overwhelming that he can’t keep the residual panic from his face. 

 

“Hey, calm down, Pete, you’re good,” says Steve, bracing Peter as he blinks the blood out of his eyes and tries to figure out what happened. “We’ve got you.” 

 

“Medical’s on the way down,” says Natasha. 

 

Peter tries to get up and sucks in a breath.

 

“Stay down, kid,” says Tony firmly. 

 

Peter locks eyes with him, and only then does it seem to register that his mask isn’t on anymore. He lifts his good arm, patting a hand to his face, his eyes immediately sliding shut in resignation. 

 

“Oh god,” he says thickly. “This is worse than the time Flash pantsed me at eighth grade graduation.”

 

Tony can feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on him at that. Their judgment can possibly make him feel any worse than he already does. 

 

“So _ this _ is your big secret?” asks Sam, evidently trying to lighten the mood. “I thought you were horribly disfigured. I didn’t realize you were horribly disfigured  _ and _ a kid.” 

 

Peter laughs at that, wincing, and then to the collective horror of everyone in the room Tony sees that there’s blood trickling from his mouth. “Oh, that’s … gross,” Peter mutters, just before his eyes slide shut and he loses consciousness again. 

 

Steve scoops him up then, and Tony realizes that the medical team has arrived to take him out. Only Tony and Steve follow, the two of them silent as their footsteps echo down the hall. They don’t have to say anything to each other — there’s nothing  _ to _ say. No fights left to be fought, no fists to be thrown, no heated words to exchange. Just the burden of a shared guilt, and the knowledge that whatever just happened back there can never, ever happen again. 

   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys again for your patience and for all your comments <3\. 
> 
> Just for the sake of not disappointing anyone, I want to make it clear that I'm not, like, going full into Infinity War in the next chapter — that is above and beyond the scope of my human brain. I'm keeping this story strictly in the buildup of Infinity War, which a lot of y'all have caught on to, and it's going to stay in that pre-timeline. That being said, I hope to deliver on the angst/drama/what even is this, dear lord even without Thanos squishing our faves. 
> 
> On that note, I'm going to go outside and maybe see the sun?? (hahahaha just kidding I'm back on Tumblr.) 
> 
> OH and speaking of Tumblr, still taking requests for one-shots and five time format fics at upcamethesun.tumblr.com! (It's a sad side blog, plz excuse the appearance.)


	6. six

Of course it’s Manhattan. And of  _ course _ it’s in the middle of the school day. 

 

At first when the message comes in, Tony isn’t even certain it will require the entire team coming down from upstate. There are reports of drones hovering in the city — actually, the first contact he has is from local and state authorities, asking if Stark Industries is responsible. Only after Tony gets eyes on them and quickly realizes that the tech is  _ anything _ but earthly does he call Steve over and start working out some kind of action plan. 

 

Until, that is, the things stop hovering and start actually shooting, at which point the plan is  _ move _ . 

 

It will only take them ten minutes to get into the city, but the ten minutes will be costly, Tony realizes. They moved Avengers Tower to avoid putting a massive bullseye on Manhattan, in an effort to keep people safe — it doesn’t occur to Tony until they’re flying with a ridiculously long ETA that the consequences work both ways. 

 

“We need eyes on the ground,” says Steve through the comm.

 

Then Tony hears a voice he wishes he could un-hear the moment it responds. “You got ‘em,” says one breathless Peter Parker. 

 

Shit. He hadn't decided whether or not to call Peter in; he is a little bit stunned at his own stupidity that it didn't occur to him that Peter would just go on ahead without them.  

 

“Kid, you’re supposed to  _ wait _ for us — ”

 

“Yeah, well, a flying alien robot just shot a laser through my homeroom, so — ”

 

“What are you seeing, Pete?” Steve asks. 

 

“Um — they’re round and like, the size of a basketball, and they’re shooting off these lasers that are freezing people in place — oh, shit,” says Peter candidly, “okay, well, I guess if you piss them off the lasers turn into actual lasers and they’re really, um … not great — ” 

 

“Peter,  _ wait for backup _ — ”

 

“Yeah, um — they’re kind of chasing me now, so — ”

 

“Stay out of the line of fire,” says Steve. 

 

“No, no, it’s good, they’re all kind of — uh — rallying? I mean — not shooting at civilians anymore — which is … um … good — ”

 

“We’re two minutes out, kid, don’t do anything stupid,” says Tony through his teeth.  

 

“Not really sure if there's an un-stupid way to outrun robots?" 

 

“Where are you now?” Steve asks. 

 

“Uh, Flatiron dist —  _ shit _ .” 

 

It takes another minute for them to reach him, and less than a second to understand the scope of the attack. It’s nothing like the early footage Tony got, of the drones seeming to calmly map the terrain of the city — now the drones are moving like a hive, spinning out and around buildings, focused on one thing and one thing only — Spider-Man. 

 

Tony locks on Peter’s location swinging up 23rd street. As the rest of the team divides up and starts attacking to get the bots off his back, Tony heads straight for him. 

 

Even from a distance he can see the kid’s been hit more than once. The suit is scorched in several places, and Peter is slinging webs with the accuracy of a drunk, not even bothering to look behind him anymore as he climbs. Tony doesn’t even warn him of his arrival, just flies up behind him and plucks him out of the sky. 

 

“Wh-what — ” Peter starts to fight back, then sees that it’s Tony and relaxes just a hair. “Oh, hey. Um, could you maybe put me — ” 

 

“You’re done. You’re benched. You hear me?” 

 

“What? No I’m not,” says Peter. “The team — ”

 

“Can take it from here,” says Tony. He sets Peter down on a rooftop a few blocks away. “Go home.” 

 

“Hey!” Peter protests, as Tony gears up to fly back into the chaos. “You said you wanted me to  _ help _ . Isn’t that the point of this whole — ”

 

“Peter,  _ listen _ ,” Tony yells, so firmly that the kid actually flinches and takes a step back. He’s so unsteady on his feet that it is ridiculous even entertaining the idea of letting him back into battle. “I am in  _ charge _ of this team. And I’m telling you that you’re  _ done _ . I can’t let you — ”  _ Shit _ . “I can’t afford to have a team member down, understand?” 

 

“But I — ”

 

“Say one more word, Peter, and I’ll — ”

 

“You can’t just — ”

 

“Activate Baby Monitor Protocol 65,” says Tony, the words bitter in his mouth. 

 

In an instant, Peter’s entire body stiffens; Tony steps forward and reaches him as he goes limp, just before he hits the ground. 

 

“Sorry, kid,” he mutters. He kicks open the door that leads to rooftop access and pushes Peter into the stairwell for cover, then rejoins the fight. 

 

The situation goes from bad to worse in mere instants; even in the time Tony was away, he can see the team is utterly overwhelmed. The fallen drones are staying down, but the ones that remain get more and more aggressive with each loss. Tony starts blasting them out of the sky indiscriminately, keeping one eye on them and another eye on Vision and Sam, who are ducking and weaving up in the sky with him while the others are either taking aim or trying to evacuate citizens on the ground. 

 

The adrenaline takes over for him, then, and Tony starts to lose sense of time the way he always does in a fight — there is only instinct and impulse occasionally interrupted by someone on the comm, either looking for backup or suggesting a new strategy. They are seamless and efficient as a team now, the way they were back in the very beginning; somewhere in the back of his mind Tony feels the smallest hint of pride at everything they’ve gone through, everything they’ve come back from, that they’re able to come together like this again. 

 

They’re down to the last ten drones when Tony hears Sam call his name, but hears it a beat too late — the laser the drone uses this time is so fast and so potent that Tony’s scanners don’t even pick it up. It slices so cleanly through the suit and through his abdomen that at first he doesn’t even feel it. 

 

“Tony’s been hit,” Sam says into the comm. 

 

“I’m fine,” Tony says tightly. He’s more rattled by the thing’s ability to slice through his suit than he is by the pain. “Nine more to go — ”

 

And then one gets him in the arm, right into one of the suits main propulsion units — Tony initiates a backup one just as he starts, inconveniently enough, plummeting out of the sky. 

 

“We’ve got it from here,” Wanda says into the comm, and Tony knows the words were meant for him. 

 

He at least has enough firepower to make some kind of effort from the ground, which he half-lands, half-crashes onto in the middle of Madison Square Park. He shakes it off as he gets back up to his feet, and — 

 

“ _ Shit _ .” 

 

They must have identified him as an optimal threat, because the eight that are remaining all show up in his viewfinder at once. Before he can so much as fire, another beam heads straight for him, grazing the arm of his suit and electrifying it — for a moment he is so completely stunned by the current that he can’t move. 

 

“He can’t take another hit,” he hears Steve yell — not through his comm, which has been fried, but from the other end of the park. 

 

He’s right. The suit’s systems are completely offline, and all of the backup power sources aren’t responding. 

 

_ This was a test _ , Tony realizes. Whatever was sent down here, it was never with an intention to destroy — it was to test the Avengers’ abilities. 

 

Well, they just found Tony’s weak spot. 

 

Or at least Tony thinks that they have, until he sees an even weaker one out of the corner of his eye, swinging down low — he doesn’t even have to turn his head to know Peter’s back up and headed toward him, doesn’t even have to have known the kid for more than a minute to know  _ exactly _ what kind of shit he’s about to pull. 

 

“No,” Tony yells from the ground, as the bots congregate toward him and start to take aim. 

 

The trouble is, he’s the only one who knows how stupidly,  _ ridiculously  _ loyal Peter is, and painfully careless he is with his own life. The others will think Peter is swooping in to help destroy the bots. Tony knows without even seeing a trajectory that the kid is going to make it over to him just in time to do the unforgivable — jump in front of Tony and take the shots. 

 

But Tony can’t move, and nobody can hear him without the comm. There’s nothing he can do to stop it.

 

And then he hears it: “ _ No! Let me go! _ ” 

 

It’s Peter, screaming at the top of his lungs — in the periphery, he can see the kid kicking and flailing against an arm that has anchored itself firmly around his waist. If there was any question of whether or not Steve was pulling his punches on Peter in Germany, it’s decidedly answered right now, when Steve yanks him from the edge of the park like he grabbed a piece of paper blowing in the wind. 

 

“They’re gonna  _ kill him! _ ” Peter’s voice is raw. “ _ Let me go! _ ” 

 

Tony sees the flash in front of his eyes, faster than anybody have anticipated, and braces himself. 

 

“ _ Mr. Stark! _ ” 

 

Later, after they brush off the dust and collect themselves, they’ll explain to Tony what happened — that Wanda was able to curb just enough of the beams that only one of the last round hit him, singing a hole through his arm and knocking him out with its current. All that Tony knows when he wakes up with a killer headache and some barely healed burns that sting like a bitch is that he somehow made it to the medical facility in the Avengers Tower, and that there is a very grimy, bandaged up teenager sleeping in the chair next to his bed. 

 

“He wouldn’t leave your side,” says Steve, a little rueful in the doorway. “He’s been there for five hours. They had to patch him up from that chair.” 

 

Tony closes his eyes and breathes out some mix of exasperation and something else he doesn’t quite want to let himself feel — that strange burden of having someone care as much and as unapologetically as Peter does, and the stranger burden of caring for Peter with that same kind of uncompromising way, too. 

 

“Thank you,” says Tony. It’s the first time he has ever said to to the other man without a trace of anything else. "What you did out there ... " 

 

He doesn't finish the sentence, but the both know what's on the other side of it. 

 

Steve nods. “Of course.” He looks at Peter with the barest of smiles. “Maybe someday the kid’ll talk to me again. He’s … not very happy with me.” 

 

Tony scoffs for his benefit. “Teenagers,” he says. “What can you do?” 

 

Steve’s mouth sets back into a grim line, and Tony sees it then — the understanding. Everything Tony has been trying to convey to him since he first got involved in Peter’s life that he could never say out loud in so many words. He knows Steve must feel some degree of it too, but in that moment he lets it slide, and it’s more than just an understanding of where Tony is coming from and everything he is scared to lose — it’s a respect. 

 

“The best we can.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, that's a wrap, folks. Thank you for reading and for your encouragement and constructive comments. Y'all are my happy place <3\. 
> 
> If anybody needs me I'm going to be running around after hearing all the Infinity War trailer leaks like a chicken with its head cut off.


End file.
